2026 Fall Conference

Call for Proposals

This conference will explore the networks of creative and intellectual labor in American advertising and marketing, broadly defined, from the colonial period through the twentieth century. We seek papers that identify and explain the nodes of production and intellectual labor that crafted persuasive communication in these fields. The conference aims to understand the variety of creators and producers who contributed to persuasion in American commerce and their connections to advertising agencies. We ask: In what ways did these hidden networks of persuasion shape American business and culture?

While much scholarship focuses on advertisements as artifacts, the people who contributed the intellectual and creative labor to produce such artifacts have often remained invisible. Many of these practitioners circulated among the overlapping fields of advertising, marketing, merchandising, promotion, and public relations even while building careers in creative fields such as art, literature, film, or music. Some also shifted their professional activities from these fields to marketing and advertising firms – and vice versa.

We are particularly interested in papers that explore the interactions between various nodes in the networks of advertising production such as:

• How did these networks of persuasion function and how did they overlap?
• What were the geographical and social spaces of creative production that brought creators together (e.g. particular cities, neighborhoods, buildings, cafes, and the like)?
• In what ways did advertising and promotional work help subsidize creative careers?
• What were the interactions of such individuals with agency professionals and their clients?
• How did people in these networks interact with each other, and / or circulate in related fields?
• In what ways did these networks shape the evolution of advertising, marketing, and promotion in American business and culture?

Alternatively, papers might consider the intellectual and creative labor contributed by specific individuals or professions, including but not limited to:

• Printers, lithographers, typesetters, and related technicians
• Playwrights, professional authors, journalists, and literary professionals (e.g., magazine editors)
• Musicians, composers
• Photographers, illustrators, painters, graphic designers, filmmakers, and other artists
• Interior designers, window-display creators, industrial designers, set designers, fashion designers, and merchandisers
• Market researchers, management theorists, psychologists, and sociologists
• Business leaders, entrepreneurs, inventors
• Key innovators or innovations that laid the groundwork for aesthetic or strategic changes in advertising practices
• How outside creative and intellectual labor was valued (whether underpaid or overpaid) in advertising and marketing

Please submit proposals of no more than 500 words and a one-page C.V. to Carol Lockman at clockman@Hagley.org by June 1, 2026. Conference presenters will be asked to submit complete versions of their conference papers by Sept 26, 2026. The conference is planned as an in-person event but will adopt a virtual format if necessary. Presenters will receive lodging in the conference hotel and compensation for their travel costs. The program committee includes Jennifer Black, Cynthia Meyers, Greg Hargreaves, and Roger Horowitz.